The ReferenceUSA historical business data collection provides detailed data on the characteristics of US businesses. Currently, our Repository has 1997-2011 and 2013. Eventually, we will add 2012 and 2014, but you can email askdata@duke.edu regarding these years. Alternative sources, and more recent data, can be obtained through the WRDS interface (allows the extraction of large datasets) or the Data Axle interface (easy-to-use HTML web query form).
Each year has from 78 to 94 indicators; a particular observation may not have values for each indicator. Data may include:
- Directory information (business name, contact name, phone number)
- Locational information (address, state and county FIPS codes, latitude and longitude coordinates). This makes the data useful in GIS software.
- Product/business identification codes (NAICS, SIC, franchise codes)
- Size of business (employees, sales volume)
Each file is large (several gigabytes). The specific record counts and file sizes can be located in this document. (We have the Business files “infogroup_bus_YEAR” but not the Consumer files “infogroup_cons_YEAR.” ) The files will need to be used in a statistical program such as Stata or SAS to search/filter/sort and to extract subsets of interest.
Only current members of the Duke Community may access this collection. Redistribution is strictly prohibited.
Access ReferenceUSA Historical Business Data
